July has been a whirlwind of activities. There have been family fun days and camp days as well as challenging days and crazy busy days. We stared off the month with a Powers clan meet up for 4th of July week. We celebrated Lydia’s birthday and Cordelia participated in her first ice skating competition. We’ve been doing summer camp roulette each week keeping everyone busy. For the final week of the month, the older three are doing VBS and an animal “zoo keeper” camp.
Cordelia had some firsts this month. She went to her first “away” overnight camp for a whole week. She had a fun time but also came home very homesick. She participated in her first ice skating competition. She competed at the Basic 5 level and got 4th out of 6 participants. She has a fun time at the ice rink spending time with her group of friends. She started the new skating session in Academy 1, learning a lot more spins and jumps. For summer camps, after her away camp week, she did two weeks of day camps with Anthony at the Salvation Army.
Anthony got his camp Grandma and Grandpa week this month. He had a fun week visiting the fire department, playing mini-golf, and going to Legoland. Then he did two weeks of day camps with Cordelia at the Salvation Army. Anthony is working hard in soccer. He’s continuing in the skills 3 class and working on ball control and spacing. He’s finally starting to feel more comfortable on the large indoor field for his soccer games. His team came in third place at the end of the regular 6-week season. It was a pretty tough loss on the last game. But his team has bounced back and won both games in the playoffs, with the finals the first Sunday of Aug. Then there’s a break from games for a month.
Lydia is 6 years old! We celebrated her 6th birthday by going to Legoland where she rode both Jr. Drive and Driving school on the same day. She had two of her friends from school join us for the festivities as well as her teacher. Then we had a nice family steak dinner. Lydia continues to work hard in swimming, improving her strokes and techniques. She’s also enjoying soccer, though it’s a bit hot and tiring. We’re evaluating if we should switch her to a different sport for the school year.
Natalie continues to develop in all areas. She’s still got a month and half to go before she’s officially 3 but she’s basically at a 3 yr old age now. She’s talking super well and doing a great job being responsible with her potty needs. She has also started to develop a bit of attitude, trying to take her siblings things or pouting when she’s not getting her way. Bedtime with Lydia was being a problem, so we moved Natalie in with Anthony for sleeping time. That seems to be working better for everyone. Natalie has been doing great at swimming the last few weeks. She’s pushing off, putting her eyes in the water and starting to roll over on her own. She seems really close to leveling up.
Alicia’s work increased in demands this month. She’s trying to push some of her projects to completion, but those final milestones continue to be just out of reach. For one of the projects she has a plan now to get it through completion, so there’s hope. A lot of what she’s doing is maintaining and keeping the proverbial “ship” afloat. She was able to have a shorter conversation with the co-worker she had shared Jesus with last month. Small steps but Alicia is showing herself to be open and interested in engaging and answering questions. Family demands picked up quite a bit this month with summer camps. Alicia has been making sure the kids get to their activities and thanks to Aunt Kelly’s help she has still managed to keep her work hours around 75%. Alicia has enjoyed watching Anthony’s soccer games, cheering Cordelia on at her first ice skating competition, and watching the kids play together in the backyard pool. AWANA plans are on the horizon, with the first director meeting being held at the end of the month. The second half of August promises to be busy with preparations for another year of Sparks. Alicia is excited to have Tim joining her at AWANA this year and being able to work together as a team.
Tim’s role at work seemed to spontaneously change while we were gone on 4th of July vacation. He came back to days of meetings, project planning and technical challenges. While he’s trying to get his portion of the system functional, the other parts are not working which is making the overall project unable to meet the needed deliverables. With all the meetings and project demands Tim had to take a few weeks break from his working out and soccer fun. But towards the end of the month Anthony expressed interest in working out and that has gotten Tim back into a routine with Anthony as his new work out buddy. He also got back on the soccer field a few times too. On the home front, we still have not been able to find anyone willing to do our kitchen remodel. Tim is working on getting the garage shop more organized since we anticipate we’ll end up having to do a fair amount of the remodel ourselves. Tim spent two days making a cabinet box with drawers to better organize his tools. Tim is stepping down from serving at church for Sunday morning kids’ church. He’s going to be teaching the Sparks lessons for the upcoming club year and joining Alicia as fellow director.
July was quite a month. So many transitions and every week with new schedules made it a hard month to feel continuity. We’ll continue with summer camps into August and then transition again as school begins towards the end of August. We’re praying for this to be a positive school year for the kids. We’re specifically concerned about Cordelia to make sure she’s being challenged academically. We’re meeting with her teachers and the principal at the beginning of the month to align on the plan for her educational progress.
